


By Bread Alone

by vigilantejam



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Biblical Themes, Bickering, Daddy Issues, Jealousy, M/M, Praise Kink, Rimming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:21:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23986747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vigilantejam/pseuds/vigilantejam
Summary: "Oh, speak the words, Mr Hickey."
Relationships: James Fitzjames/Cornelius Hickey
Comments: 14
Kudos: 17





	By Bread Alone

No escort was offered after dinner, and the lower deck was deserted but for the sounds from all quarters. So it was hardly a surprise when Hickey slipped from the shadows, and enquired of him _a moment of your time, Captain_ without inflecting for the question or waiting for an answer. Fitzjames was steered into a small cabin that belonged to neither of them, and did not believe Hickey's assurances as he crowded up against him.

“We'll not be disturbed.”

“We'll hardly have occasion to be,” Fitzjames replied, extricating himself from the man's hands and making to leave.

“Another indifferent reception at the table?” Hickey smiled and moved his fingers to Fitzjames' buttons. “Don't sulk.”

How did it get to be that Hickey could read his moods so easily? He would have to take care in future, lest it be so obvious to everyone when he was spurned and wounded.

“Does it make it worse, do you think, that he expects so much of you?” Hickey was still talking, a gentle lilt to his voice that masked the venom only momentarily. “I at least am beyond his disappointment.”

Fitzjames growled as loud as he dared and caught Hickey's face with his hand. Hickey only grinned and moaned theatrically as his back hit the wall, a sound more than the impact would have forced from him, and a few strands of his hair fell loose into his eyes. Fitzjames tightened his fingers around the man's jaw and watched his mouth pucker and pout, no doubt helped along by his insolence.

“So forceful, Captain,” Hickey teased, his eyes glittering, “What is it that provokes this impulse? You see yourself in me, perhaps.”

Fitzjames hesitated. Of the options laid before him, a fight would do as well as a fuck, and it was a rare occasion indeed that Mr Hickey did not give him his full attention in either pursuit.

Hickey raised his head, just a little, enough to encourage Fitzjames to loosen his grip and slide the hand down to his neck. Hickey's pulse beat quick under his fingertips and he felt the hard line of his throat as he swallowed against his palm.

A fuck, then. They had both suffered enough, of late.

“What does he deny you? What do you deny yourself? Do you try to pass one off as the other? Hmm?”

Hickey's whispers unfurled between them, both an accusation and call to action, as he worked one hand into the layers of James' coat to rest on his hip, dropping the other to brush knuckles against the front of his trousers. Fitzjames felt his breath hitch, involuntarily, another terrible tell.

He brought their faces closer together, too close in the narrow space. At this distance Hickey's eyelashes appeared spun from gold, and his freckles a map of the constellations. He smelled sweeter and was possessed of softer hands than any sailor Fitzjames had ever met. As though he was not of this earth at all.

Hickey lifted himself onto his toes to reach Fitzjames' ear.

“Take of me what he will not give.”

Hickey's breath was hot on his collar, and Fitzjames merely an inch away from taking his mouth in his teeth before he thought better of it.

“On your knees, Mr Hickey. Where I needn't look at you.”

Fitzjames retreated and set about the fastenings of his trousers and coat, showing his back. He felt Hickey behind him, his arms too short to wrap all the way around his shoulders, tugging at his coat until he relented and let him take it, laying it with unusual care on the bunk. He pulled Fitzjames' shirt free, fingers dancing over the bones of his hips, a breath short of tickling, lighting him up with goosebumps and anticipation. The air shifted as Hickey sank to his knees, taking the trousers with him.

It occurred to him, later, recounting the night to himself, that Hickey was there, his palms spread over the firm and smooth flesh of Fitzjames' buttocks, sighing about visions of perfection while his own... There is an image burned into Fitzjames' mind of Hickey, bared and prone over the table, his backside in ruins. His wounds must have hurt, worse out in the cold than in here, but still stretched and pulled as he crouched.

Hickey started with featherlight touches and Fitzjames knew immediately, demoting him to the floor and out of sight would not be without its retribution. Hickey was going to take his time, and make James' own request his punishment.

Hickey hummed against the back of his thighs, making the fine hairs stand up until he ran a warm hand over them.

“You are a credit to the service, Captain.” Hickey's hands rose across his arse, a thumb tracing into the cleft, before settling at the base of his spine, rubbing in circles, each halo undoing him a little more.

“So good," Hickey crooned. "So dutiful. Why should our unsung heroes be without glory.”

Hickey licked up into him. His tongue marked a wide stripe, hot and wet and then cool as the cabin air caught it. Fitzjames hissed and planted his palms wide, solid and grounding. He studied his own fingernails, clipped short and clean, and followed the long lines of his fingers to the tendons popping into relief across the back of his hands as he tensed and gripped the wall. He must stay here, an upstanding officer and a gentleman, and as he had the thought he closed his eyes and allowed himself to arch back into Hickey's touch.

“There,” Hickey soothed, “Let me take care of you.”

Between tongue and thumb Hickey worked him, his angel's hands caressing and kneading the stress and frustration out of him.

“These legs, James, you could haul the whole lot of us to Canada without tiring,” he mouthed over his muscles, making a trail of warm kisses down to his knees.

Hickey was as practised in manipulations with his tongue as his words. Soft and loose, agonisingly tender, then firm and enquiring. Confident strokes and low noises that sent shivers up Fitzjames' spine and down his legs. He could feel the shakes beginning in his thighs and braced tighter. Every word he wanted to hear but came from the wrong mouth. Hickey couldn't help it, there was no hiding his disdain for the qualities he listed. Still they were words Fitzjames had trained himself to find gratifying, and each anointing of _good_ under the pressure of steady hands set his heart alight.

The air thickened around him and became more difficult to pull into his lungs. He gasped and whined as his breaths turned shallow and desperate. He could feel it coming, the truth, building up in tears behind his eyes and psalms on his lips. Exaltations and benedictions.

“He's so wrong to underestimate you. You're perfect. If they knew, Hickey, what you can do, they would be in rows at your feet. Undone beneath you.”

He could feel his muscles contracting, relaxing, beckoning under Hickey's insistent mouth, the raw scratch of his beard. Hickey's arms coiled tight around his legs, his fingers digging into his thighs and pelvis, clawing higher but never bringing him to relief. His face was pressed hard against him and all that meant after years at sea. The bone of his nose rutted against the base of James' spine, taking only pleasure and not disgust as he ate of him.

“Hickey, yes. Please. I'm with you. I'm here. All and anything you want.”

Fitzjames gasped, fighting for control over his own words.

“You know you have me. You're so good, so right.”

He made more noises than words now, as he gulped at the air and his arms shook under his own weight.

“Please. Hickey, please.”

“The men respect you, Captain, adore you as I do. Between us, you know...”

Hickey's implications melted into the persistence of his tongue, pressing into Fitzjames again and again, extracting all the whispered gratitude and keening he had to give.

“Yes.”

“If we asked them, together. They'd turn on him.”

Fitzjames froze, though trembling as Hickey continued in his labours.

“That is- Mr Hickey, I will not be a part of a mutiny.”

Hickey stopped abruptly and fell back on his heels, Fitzjames chased the plaintive moan that escaped him without luck.

“But you said,” Hickey groused, his pout audible if not visible.

Fitzjames gathered himself and willed the strength back into his limbs and lungs.

“The words you pull from me have as much to do with your vanity as my weakness. I may tell you your lips give a pretty sermon and your tongue conjures music beyond that of the holy choir, but we both know it is not your ministry I seek. You are a snake, Mr Hickey.”

“And what does that make you, sir?”

Hickey gripped the side of the bunk and raised himself to his feet. A low snarl started in Fitzjames' throat as the air cooled around his legs.

“Back on the boards, Hickey, your rebellion might be over before it has begun but you will finish this.”

Fitzjames turned as well as he could and watched Hickey rearrange his trousers and brush down his knees before locking him in eye contact. He shook his head.

“Not this time.”

“Do as you are told, Mr Hickey.” Fitzjames directed, though his voice was cracked, helpless and exposed.

“I don't take orders from dead men. And that's all we are now, all of us. You know it, too.”

Hickey made a show of wiping the back of his hand over his red and swollen lips, the hairs of his moustache formed into damp locks with saliva and the rest. He gave a pointed look to Fitzjames' state of undress and arched an eyebrow.

“Your little death is your own problem.”

Then he was gone, slipping through the curtain without another word.

Fitzjames huffed through gritted teeth, unable to call after him and risk alerting someone. He began an undignified shuffle with his trousers around his ankles, casting about the room for assistance until his eyes landed on a rag. It was greased and dirty and stinking of iron. With a few swift moves and a grunt he was spent, perfunctory and dissatisfactory. He balled up the rag and would have delivered it to Hickey's hammock if he could do so without notice. Instead he tossed it onto the bunk. Let Hickey explain himself to Armitage, if indeed they had some kind of arrangement. It was provocative, but not nearly so much as Hickey's suggestion. They both had each other in hand now.

Fitzjames redressed and exited the berth still smoothing down the front of his overcoat.

Captain Crozier stood alone. In the shadows he seemed cast from iron and rock, stark and forbidding, his form leaning with the cant of the ship, or the liquor. His chest rose and fell as though under the power of a great engine, and his lips were parted just enough to show the set of his teeth and jaw. His eyes caught the fire of the lamps, and burned with the heat of a forge as he regarded Fitzjames. When he spoke his voice was pitched low, and Fitzjames strained to hear the words of his judgement.

“I think it best you do not return to Terror for now, James. Until I see fit.”

“Francis, I-”

“You are dismissed, Captain Fitzjames.”

Fitzjames' feet hit the ice and the dark Arctic night enveloped him. He walked, marking with each stride the distance that opened between them, cold and alone towards Erebus.

**Author's Note:**

> poose [showed me a thing](https://twitter.com/terror_exe/status/1255862736237596675), so while i'm grateful for her cheerleading this is also entirely her fault  
> i haven't written fanfic in forever but the ice boys demand it, so thanks for stopping by. i love you.


End file.
